


Dust to Dust

by Selkit



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, October Prompt Challenge, Post-Canon, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:07:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28098180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkit/pseuds/Selkit
Summary: On his one thousand and thirtieth birthday, Ted Faro wakes up.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	Dust to Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for a Fictober prompt two years ago and am very belatedly posting it to AO3. The prompt was _“I heard enough, this ends now.”_

Ted Faro opens his eyes to smothering darkness.

“Date?” he asks aloud, testing his limbs gingerly. All his fingers and toes twitch on command, strength returning bit by bit.

“December 24,” answers the cryo chamber’s artificial voice, prompt and polite. “The year is 3043. Happy birthday, Mr. Faro.”

His skin feels shriveled as a mummy’s, but it’s worth the discomfort to stretch his parched lips in a grin. One thousand and thirty years old, today. He’s done it. He’s been reborn, a second birth–-a _better_ birth, rising from the ashes of the old world’s mistakes.

Maybe, instead of Thebes, he should have named his bunker Phoenix. Or Bethlehem.

“Open,” he commands. The chamber obeys, and he sits up. 

There’s barely time to blink before the room floods with light. He throws up an arm, shielding his eyes from the assault, but it takes only a moment to realize: he’s not in Thebes anymore. Someone’s moved his cryo chamber.

He gives a wordless sputter, lurching upward, but momentum carries him only to his knees. His hands fly to his throat, pawing at papery skin, and his head cranes back.

A ghost stands before him, above him. Staring down at him in that familiar superior way that always, always made his blood churn scarlet-hot.

“Lis?” he tries. It comes out pathetic, stuck between a whisper and a wheeze. “But…you’re dead.”

The skin around her eyes tightens. “No.” 

But it _is_ Elisabet. He’d know her anywhere. By some trick of the light she looks younger, and her hair’s gone long and wild, and she’s dressed like she just stepped out of a historical interpretive exhibit, but it’s _her._

“Been a while.” He tries his old trademark grin. “Guess we have a hell of a lot to talk about, huh?”

“I’m not her,” she says. Elisabet’s body, Elisabet’s voice. “And I’ve heard enough. This ends now.”

For the first time, he notices the wicked length of a spear in her hand. Pacifist, peace-loving Elisabet’s fingers clenched so tight the knuckles are blanched and bloodless. 

His eyes dart back to hers, the same eyes he saw across the table at countless boardroom meetings. Only sharper, now. Colder.

And it dawns on him, very slowly, that he doesn’t know this woman at all.


End file.
